Keres

The Keres are the Pueblo people of seven towns along the Rio Grande and its western tributaries in New Mexico, including the mesa pueblos of Acoma and Laguna. Archaeology and Cochiti oral tradition suggest they entered the Rio Grande drainage from the west in the early 1300s, after the depopulation of the El Morro valley.

Acoma, perched on its mesa, had been occupied for over a thousand years when Estevanico visited in 1539. In 1599 Juan de Oñate's troops sacked the town, killing some 800 people and enslaving hundreds more. Survivors rebuilt, raised the San Esteban mission church between 1629 and 1641, and joined the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, after which refugees from Acoma and other rebel towns founded Laguna.

Through the eighteenth century the Keres pueblos kept matrilineal clans and kiva rituals beneath an outward Catholicism, while fending off raids by Apache, Comanche and Ute.